Cole Waldrip
Senior Software Engineer & Technical Lead
I've spent 10+ years writing code, leading teams, and shipping products end to end. What I care about most is growing the engineers around me. I'm at my best mentoring people, setting technical direction, and helping a team do its best work.
About
Building products, and the people who build them
I'm a senior software engineer and technical lead with over a decade of experience across collectibles marketplaces, CRM platforms, and hospitality tech. Most recently, I've been running my own freelance practice, where I wireframe, build, and lead engineering teams for clients from first sketch to launch.
Along the way, the part of the job I've gravitated toward most has stopped being the code itself and become the people writing it: mentoring engineers, setting technical direction, and being the person a team or client trusts to get something hard across the finish line. These days, I'm just as energized by helping an engineer grow as I am by shipping the product itself.
I've always ended up leading the team. I'd rather do it on purpose.
Experience
Where I've built and led
- Lead a freelance practice for a portfolio of clients, serving as the primary point of contact for design, development, and delivery across multiple concurrent, long-term engagements
- Flagship project: designed and built a custom platform for MC Sports Cards, a sports card consignment service. Wireframed the full client & admin experience, then hired and led a team of engineers to build and maintain it
- Designed and developed custom websites for a range of clients, owning technical decisions from concept through launch
- Managed ongoing design and development projects, serving as lead point of contact for client relationships and delivery timelines
- Served as tech lead across multiple engineering teams (3–8 engineers) as team structure evolved, guiding technical direction and code quality
- Built a React/Next.js web app enabling collectors to manage and sell items through the Goldin marketplace
- Member of the frontend architecture guild, defining standards and patterns adopted org-wide
- Helped build the product from an early stage, designing and developing the web and mobile apps that let card collectors track sales data and manage their collections
- Company acquired by Collectors Universe Inc. (~$10M) in 2021
- Tech lead for engineering teams building the Keap CRM; formally mentored engineers on performance improvement plans
- Designed and developed web/mobile ordering apps for restaurants; acquired by Heartland Payment Systems (~$30M)
References available on request.
Skills
What I bring to a team
Leadership
Technical
Beyond the Code
When I'm not at the keyboard, I'm writing and producing music, tinkering with game design and development in Unity, or adding to an unreasonably large Pokémon card collection.
Contact
Let's talk
I'm always up for a conversation about engineering leadership, mentoring, or what you're building. If there's a team you think I'd be a great fit to lead, I'd love to hear about it.